It’s Deepavali. Yay!
Forgive me for this early morning barrage of enthusiasm. I’m a morning person, and I love festivals. Also, in my defence, it is best to do riyaz first thing in the morning.
Yesterday, on my evening stroll, as I walked through crowded markets and residential streets of a Bombay suburb, I was overwhelmed by the light, and camaraderie. The place was ablaze, as if Hanuman had just been there with his laughter and burning tail!
That this city is transactional in nature - governed by laws of give and take - is well known. But these are not cold transactions, there is more ‘give’ then ‘take’, and those who have less give more.
Bombay is that warm, all-embracing older thai who loves you with unconditional surrender, sweeping all your troubles under the pallu of her kasta sari. In this city we have learnt to find joy in the smallest of moments, to practice the alchemy of largesse with scarce resources.
The markets, yesterday, were bustling with raw energy, the return of touch and feel, of greeting forgotten faces, and the renewing of old rituals of community. There were masks, but the spectre of the pandemic seemed much reduced. I have found, recently, that I have grown lax, too. I even watched DUNE in theatres.. but that’s another story.
I’m a mangalorean bunt, and one of the rituals of Diwali practiced in our community, is called ‘Meepina Parba’. This crudely translates to ‘bathing ritual’. On the morning of diwali, you do an ‘oil bath’ - first smear your entire body with oil, and then have a bath. After that you wear something new to signify the arrival of the new year. The ritual is symbolic of ideas of purification and cleansing, in the way that the lighting of lamps is an invitation to prosperity and better times.
As I was thinking of this ‘purge’, I found myself returning to a familiar train of thoughts:
I have been angry far too long. There is so much injustice happening in this world, injustice that pricks like a persistent needle - how to ignore it? Much of my rage I channel into this platform. It comes from a sense of futility too, because what can a few words do, at the end of the day? The enormity of the battle we have to fight every day, resisting the gradually tightening noose of the anthropocene - from the world to our nations, and then to our homes, and our minds - is ever present. And still we persevere, because that is what it means to be human - no?
‘…Something keeps trying, but I’m not killed yet’
I want to believe, however, that there is a subconscious urge to convey a sense of hope, and redemption. This is important for me in an age where it is easier to hate, than to love a thing, where the critique of a creative endeavour reaches you even before you have experienced it. How can we feel then, if we are constantly regulating our responses using the barometer of public opinion?
Melancholy is inevitable. But poetry is the workshop where melancholy toils, along with rage, birthing little figurines that slip neatly into an imagination of a more equitable, more free, and loving world.
I had stowed away the poem that I share with you today for the right time. I think that time is now. This poem - You Are Who I Love, by Aracelis Girmay - has a very large heart. It is doused in a kindness whose ever expanding circumference seems to embrace the entire world. Each minute detail, each count of sorrow, rage, pain, and suffering is coloured with a uniquely neon haze, and haloed with the incessant affirmation of love. It continues till the end with an earnest quest, and a sense of unbounded emotion. Even the end does not really give any kind of ‘closure’. I felt like the entire world could continue writing this poem. I’m sure the poet feels this too, which is why she doesn’t try to curtail it with some meaningless flourish.
I like this about the poem, and the poet. The writing is in a process of becoming, it is not complete with the artifice of assured wisdom. It questions, and accepts, even the mystery of injustice. And it moves on, teetering, but firm, in its uncertain pursuit of truth.
You are Who I love, time and again, has filled up the dark room of my being with the fragile, relentless flickering of a small burning diya.
The poet Aracelis Girmay, a sensitive being, whose voice is striking in its capacity for curiousity, says it well:
“I am amazed by how much people can survive, endure—and how they can go on living, laughing. After thorough devastation, indescribable loss, people’s hearts still beat. People can, still, live. This is perplexing, bewildering news to me. Defies all sense and gravity to me. And yet.
When I see people living—and we do! we do everyday!—in and through and around all kinds of circumstances, I am in love and want to know, how, how?”
Thankyou for listening.
and Happy Deepavali.
P.S. You can also check out the other Girmay poem I’ve shared on Poetly before - For Estefani Lora, Third Grade, Who Made Me A Card.
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